"What a shift! In a radically different interpretation of our relationship to the world we live in, Wheeler states that it's impossible for us to simply watch the universe happen around us. Experiments in quantum physics, in fact, do show that simply looking at something as tiny as an electron--just focusing our awareness upon what it's doing for even an instant of time--changes its properties while we're watching it. The experiments suggest that the very observation is an act of creation, and that consciousness is doing the creating. These findings seem to support Wheeler's propostion that we can no longer consider ourselves merely onlookers who have no effect on the world that we're observing.

To think of ourselves as participating in creation rather than simply passing through the universe during a brief period of a lifetime requires a new perception of what the cosmos is and how it works. The groundwork for such a radical worldview was the basis for a series of books and papers by another Princeton physicist and colleague of Einstein, David Bohm. Before his death in 1992, Bohm left us two pioneering theories that offer a very different--and in some ways, a nearly holistic--view of the universe and our role in it.

The first was an interpretation of quantum physics that set the stage for Bohm's meeting and subsequent friendship with Einstein. It was this theory that opened the door to what Bohm called the "creative operation of underlying ... levels of reality." In other words, he beileved that there are deeper or higher planes of creation that hold the template for what happens in our world. It's from these subtler levels of reality that our physical world originates."

I go to a pub and talk to another man. He is experienced deeply part of the time, and shallowly another part of the time, depending on the quality of my consciousness. If I am very conscious, meeting him can be an experience comparable to great music or even an earthquake; if I am in the usual shallow state, he barely "makes an impression." If I am practicing alertness and neurological self-criticism, I may observe that I am only experiencing him part of the time, and that part of the time I am not-tuning-in but drifting off to my favorite “Real” Universe and editing out at the ear-drum much of what he is saying. Often, the “Real” Universe hypnotizes me sufficiently that, while I “hear” what he says, I have no idea of the way he says it or what he means to convey.

Ever since learning I wasn’t the only unreal person in the world, I’d developed an annoying habit of studying people to determine their true ontological status. I studied people in class, the library, the cafeteria, my dorm, around campus, while running the Gargoyle Castle Loop. Now, under the influence of acid, I began to suspect everyone was unreal. That behind all the masks and makeup, the smiles and laughter, the quips and repartees, there was a good chance of finding absolutely nothing.

Sol Luckman

Source: The Toy Buddha: Book II of the Beginner's Luke Series (The Beginner's Luke Series), Pages: 25..25

“How does the mid/brain cause one particular line of thought, or decision, to be sustained over another? Stapp offers an intriguing speculation based on the Quantum Zeno Effect. This refers to a prediction (since confirmed by experiments) that the act of rapidly observing a quantum system forces that system to remain in its wavelike, indeterminate state, rather than to collapse into a particular, determined state. As Stapp says,

‘Taken to the extreme, observing continuously whether an atom is in a certain state keeps it in that state forever. For this reason, the Quantum Zeno Effect is also known as the watched pot effect. The mere act of rapidly asking questions of a quantum system freezes it in a particular state, preventing it from evolving as it would if we weren’t peeking. Simply observing a quantum system suppresses certain of its transitions to other states.’”

Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it.

Of course, a psychologist would find it more direct to study the inspired poet. He would make concrete studies of inspiration in individual geniuses. But for all that, would he experience the phenomena of inspiration? His human documentation gathered from inspired poets could hardly be related, except from the exterior, in an ideal of objective observations. Comparison of inspired poets would soon make us lose sight of inspiration.